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I have little sympathy for an industry that could have spent the last 40 years reducing their emissions.

Paying for extra emission reduction would put you at a competitive disadvantage against power plants who just did the bare minimum.
Or, in a highly regulated environment, it might run you afoul of price controls.

> The best content on the internet is produced out of a passion for creating the content,
It's best when those people can devote 100% of their time to their passion. Advertising enables that.
Otherwise they have to get "a real job" and only spend their spare time (if any) being creative.

because of our idiotic love affair with the failed "trickle down" theory of economics, we end up punishing millions of people, not because they're unwilling to work, but because we simply don't need them to.

So to combat "trickle-down" economics we should hire unnecessary workers? I'm not sure you have your economic theories straight.

we could simply start giving everyone enough money to get by

Money is a proxy for value. Simply printing more money does not magically create more things of value -- and in fact can lead to other negative consequences. If you don't believe me then I'll bet you 1 trillion Zimbabwean dollars that I'm right.

I'm also curious specifically on the drinking water pollution- something we should watch. Some people have detected elevated levels of methane in their water around fracking sites. I'm curious how much of this is really from fracking and how much is due to the fact that they only frack in places where there is methane in the ground anyway.

And it is at that point that money goes away (though the actual going away part might be exceedingly unpleasant for a time). The rich who own the means to make products have no one to sell them to, and the poor who have nothing either revolt and take back all the resources that the rich have gobbled up or, less likely, get together with the rich and forge a money-less society.

More likely all those products become cheaper and cheaper until they're practically free. At some point it becomes feasible for a small number of talented individuals to provide free alternatives to everyone else -- kinda like the open source community.
Heck, we already have people with 3D printers donating time and materials to various causes.

I see your point about Freddie and Fanny, government backing allows people to go to college. Of course this leaves a lull in the service industry, because those that went to college cant afford to work for minimum wage while paying off college loans.

The more salient point that most people miss is that pumping money into the college industry has directly lead to tuition inflation. Thus making student loan debts all the much worse.

This is a recurring theme in government programs. Efforts to make something more affordable just make it more expensive -- kind of like targeted inflation. It can take the form of free loans or grants or tax credits or rule changes... there are lots of ways to screw things up while meaning well.

What we need is some sort of death penalty for government programs or institutions. They should "go out of business" if they screw up too badly. Alas, we seem to be heading in the opposite direction where now certain large corporations aren't allowed to fail.

Implementing Pickens Plan would give him rights to build electric transmission lines, and by getting a wider right of way it would allow Pickens to build water pipelines.[53]

Holy shit, transmission lines? Water pipelines?! Thank god this madman was stopped!
Sure, some cities in the area might need both of those things, but the important point is this guy wanted to make money off of it. The nerve!

What is the difference exactly between giving you $100 and lowering your tax by $100? Of course they're the same and that's why the governments favourite way to partially subsidize projects is tax breaks.

Even the politicians are honest about it, when they lower the tax on say food or books they actually say they're subsidising food or books.

I understand where you're coming from, but there are some practical and philosophical distinctions between the two:

With an actual subsidy they're directly redistributing money from one group to another.

With a tax break it's a lot less clear cut. For all we know it's a net tax gain from the extra payroll taxes, etc.

A subsidy can actually prop up a failing business, whereas tax breaks (while helpful) can't help if your expenses are still greater than your income.

It's cheaper to give a tax break of $100 than a subsidy of $100, since money tends to evaporate as it passes through a bureaucracy.

Ideologically, you don't want to encourage the idea that all income is the government's until they let you keep it.

Politicians aren't being honest when they spin tax credits as subsidies or reductions in budget growth as budget cuts (for another example).